Chuck always ends up waxing poetic around his trainees. About how professional wrestling is a dance—a violent choreography of chokeholds and suplexes, timed to the tune of their bookers' ... [+]
Grief is an anchor. Its ropes drag you to depths that you were unaware existed. When my husband died, I tried lifting the anchor as much as I could while it pulled my daughter and I down. When I lost her too, the weight became too much to bear.
Clink.
The police deemed it an accident. An unfortunate misadventure into the woods by two teenagers. Her friend Julie had made it out, desperately pleading for help but it was futile. Scratches, claw marks, gashes had already devastated my poor daughter's body. Julie claimed it was a wild animal attack. Yet, she could not identify what creature it was.
And why would she? Because that wasn't what happened.
Clink.
I remember Julie's private confession to me. She knew my daughter had struggled with the loss of her father and wanted to help. Julie's fascination with the occult led her down the path of spiritual rituals, until she found one with the promise of bringing my husband back. The two of them went into the woods that night and attempted this resurrection ritual, holding more hope than any real belief that it would work.
But it did.
They had succeeded in bringing something across, only that it wasn't my husband. When it arrived, it had chosen Julie as its host and at the same time, my daughter as its victim. Julie only caught glimpses, but enough to know what she had done. When she finally woke at dawn, it was too late.
Clink.
I was not present as Julie confessed this to me. I had already sunken, miles below. Numbed and detached. The anguish pouring out of her seemed so alien to me underwater. Her words were muted, her face distorted by the refraction of light. Tears flowing in winding paths. Arms scratched in wavy lattices. Dried blood under her fingernails.
My daughter's blood.
I felt my pulse quicken as my vision came back into focus.
Clink.
I began to harbour Julie at night, when the other side would take over. She was terrified of letting anyone else know. We would spend nights in the old abandoned house on the outskirts of town. Rumours deemed it haunted, a feature helpful in securing our isolation.
As I kept Julie contained, I did my own research. I discovered Julie had made a fatal mistake. She had misinterpreted possession as resurrection. As I read on, I uncovered more details that she had missed. The requirement of a host of similar physicality to the spirit. The manner to properly identify the one you wish to return, failure of which would allow any malevolent entity to come through. The instructions for a complete possession rather than nocturnal.
Julie's hubris at the expense of my daughter became increasingly clear. A fury sparked within me. It writhed and twisted, resisting the path towards acceptance. Instead, I felt it shaped into desperation by the dangerous notion that perhaps, I could do better.
Clink.
Now, I sit alone in the dark of the abandoned house. The glare of headlights outside interrupts my contemplation. Curious, I get up and walk to the window. I watch as a car rolls straight towards the house, before slowing to a stop. The driver steps out, a middle-aged man. Uneasy, I take a closer look.
Julie's father.
There's a tightness in my chest as I watch him stride towards the front door. I consider hiding but I fear that he might have already seen me. All I can do now is turn him away. I head to the door, opening it before he does. I watch confusion momentarily flash across his face before he recognises me.
"Oh, it's you."
I offer him a weak smile but I decline to speak.
"What are you doing out here?"
I shrug and play the part of a grieving mother.
"It's quiet here. I need that. The condolences, the looks from others... Sometimes, I need a place to get away."
Julie's father shifts uncomfortably, believing that he has interrupted my peace. Still, he persists.
"I'm sorry for intruding. It's just... Julie didn't come home yesterday and she's not picking up her phone. And with all that has happened-"
He pauses, afraid that he has overstepped. He takes my unchanged expression as permission to go on.
"I'm worried about her. I was trying to figure out where she went and I found this in her room."
He retrieves a note from his pocket. He shows it to me, the house's address scribbled in Julie's handwriting.
"Could she be here with you?"
Julie's carelessness has cost me again. I gently shake my head.
"It's just me, I'm afraid."
I take the note from him and pretend to reminisce.
"I know the two girls had talked about coming out here, to visit the old ‘haunted house' as an adventure even though it was just a silly dare. That's how my daughter was..."
The silence hangs heavily in the air. Julie's father looks away but I can sense his inner turmoil growing. His concern for his daughter wrestles with the discomfort of pressing a grieving mother. I watch him sway, increasingly tempted to accept my explanation as an escape from this pained interaction.
I almost feel sorry for him but I cannot let him see what I have done.
There's a look of resignation as he opens his mouth to speak-
Clink.
He hesitates.
"What was that?"
I hold my smile. "The house makes the odd sound now and then."
Clink.
A panic rises in me now as I feel his trust slip away. He stares right at me, and then he shouts.
"Julie?"
Clink. Clink.
His hesitation has evaporated. He pushes right past me and continues to call out his daughter's name. The clinks continue as he follows them down the hallway. I trail behind him, offering weak excuses but I know I have utterly lost. He finally locates the source, stopping at a closed door. I plead with him one last time.
"Please, you don't want to do this."
He ignores my warning and opens the door.
Clink.
Julie's father doesn't see the monster that killed my daughter. I spared him of that last night when I had managed to exorcise that entity from Julie. He doesn't witness his daughter's mistakes.
Instead, he sees the consequences of mine.
I was wrong. I thought I had it figured out but in the end, I was just as reckless and naïve as Julie. I too had attempted the ritual. All this time, Julie had thought that I was trying to help release her from the entity. In truth, I was simply freeing her body so that she could be a host for my daughter. All I wanted was my daughter back.
But the process was flawed yet again. Incomplete.
Julie's father is frozen in place. He struggles to identify the failed amalgamation of his daughter with mine lying on the floor. Her limbs and back are contorted, bones crudely lengthened in segments in a failed attempt to accommodate my daughter's taller physique. Her skin is torn, insufficiently prepared for recent growths. Red trails of exposed flesh cover her body. Her foot, the one fixed to that clinking chain, has snapped backwards.
There's a flicker of recognition in her eyes as part of her identifies her father. She desperately tries to crawl over. Her words lose their shape through her dislocated jaw and all she can manage is a strangled cry.
Julie's father is paralysed, transfixed. He is unaware that I have picked up another chain until it hits him in the temple. He collapses to the ground, temporarily freed.
I can't bear to look at her. I whisper an apology to my daughter, to Julie, to both. I promise them that I'll get it right. I just need more time. More research. More planning. I know I can get my daughter back. And as I fix the chain around the foot of Julie's father, I realise I can get my husband back too.
A lightness blooms within me. I feel the anchor's ropes slip and I start to surface.